Turned Green

In addition to ranking China's billionaire fortunes in this issue, we collaborated with our partners at forbes china magazine to compile a list of the 400 richest people in China. In the following six items, we highlight business sectors that have contributed to the 400. For the complete list, go to www.forbes.com/china.

The top of this year's list is dominated by real estate developers selling property in volume. Country Garden, the company majority-owned by this year's No. 1, Yang Huiyan, has more than 45 million square meters of space in its inventory.

Zhang Lei's Modern Group of Beijing expects sales of maybe 2% of that amount this year. "We have to get the most out of every square meter," he laughs. Zhang comes in this year on our list at a more pedestrian No. 276, worth $310 million.

Still a tidy fortune. Zhang's trump card is green. Modern Group has morphed from a little-known residential builder in a lagging part of town into one that highlights innovative environmental designs and alternative energy.

To nurture that, Zhang is recruiting foreign talent. His showcase project to date: Linked Hybrid, also known as Grand Moma (after the Museum of Modern Art in New York, like his project "a symbol of art excellence"). It's designed by Steven Holl Architects, of New York and Beijing. A site with eight apartment buildings designed for 2,500 people will be powered in part with 100-yard-deep geothermal energy wells, the largest project of its kind in China, says Steven Holl, who outside of his firm is a professor at Columbia University.

Zhang and Holl's goal is to create a spot not unlike Rockefeller Center in New York and set a standard for modern, sustainable living in China. Zhang, soft-spoken but intense, got a law degree in central China and worked for a Beijing developer, then started Modern in 1995. From Beijing he fanned out into Shanghai, Hong Kong and Australia but without much notice. It was only after 2000 that Zhang seized on the Moma brand--he lacks an actual license--and environmentalism as a theme. Today he has five projects in Beijing with the Moma name.

When Zhang's Moma International Apartments first went on sale in 2004, he got less than $1,300 per square meter. Now resale units get up to three times that much, as does the new space at Grand Moma."Environmental issues weren't given attention here in the past but are going to be among the most important for many years," he says.

The Beijing properties are now benefiting from an older staple of success in real estate: good location. Sprawl in Beijing has turned his once out-of-the-way locales into a core subdistrict convenient to the city's main airport. What will be one of Beijing's largest parks is being carved out nearby.

Zhang's green work in Beijing has helped open doors for Modern Group elsewhere in China. He is also in talks with Hyatt Group for an environmentally friendly hotel under a new Hyatt brand called Andaz in northeastern Beijing.